The Mutters complained their neighbour’s children were too noisy while playing. They complained their neighbour purposely aimed sprinklers to shoot water onto their lawn. They complained their neighbours stared at them, and parked centimetres too close to their driveway. They complained dog poop was being tossed into a portion of their shared backyard.

The Mutters complained about their next-door neighbours in Fort McMurray so many times, that the RCMP decided to file charges.

Against them, for complaining about their neighbours.

“It was like a horror movie,” Angela Smith said. “They made our lives a living hell.”

A judge agreed, and found recently in favour of Smith and her spouse, Josh Welsh, bringing an end, at least temporarily, to a dispute that has been winding its way through court for nearly two years.

In a remarkably one-sided ruling, Justice W.P. Sullivan demanded Glenn and Deanna Mutter, complainants in a civil case before the Court of Queen’s Bench, stop tormenting their neighbours.

“In fact, I find that Mr. & Mrs. Mutter are both bullies, that will go to whatever lengths to bully their neighbours,” the judge wrote in his decision. “They will use all the authorities that are available to them by law ... to pursue an unceasing campaign of harassment against their neighbours.”

In his ruling, the judge called the Mutters “self-righteous”, “entitled,” “passive aggressive,” “aggressive,” “disingenuous” and “prone to exaggeration.”

He ordered the couple to take down video cameras they had been using to spy on their neighbours, prohibited the Mutters from parking along the street in front of their house for two years, and ordered them to pay the defendants’ court costs, currently $35,000 and mounting.

“It has been a nightmare,” Smith said. “We haven’t been able to do anything like a normal family. They videotaped our little girl jumping on a trampoline.

“They didn’t leave us alone from the time we woke up in the morning to the time we went to bed.”

The Mutters did not return several phone messages seeking comment.

In a squabble that dates back nearly three years, the Mutters called everyone from bylaw officers and the SPCA to the Mounties to complain about their abutting neighbours on Fireweed Crescent, where Smith and Welsh reside with their five children.

The complaints against them became so relentless that at one point the RCMP charged the Mutters with interfering with the lawful use and enjoyment of property, and a constable provided evidence in the civil case on their neighbours’ behalf. So did SPCA officers — as well as the house’s previous owner, and a tenant who also once lived beside the Mutters.

“For years, the Mutters have complained to officials from enforcement and bylaw, the Fort McMurray SPCA, and the RCMP,” the justice wrote. “They complained about their neighbours, they complained about their neighbours past and present. It is incessant. They complain about everything they can think about to complain about.”

The judge lashed out at the Mutters for using video cameras to spy on their neighbours, and for taking pictures of them and their children. He found they intentionally made noise to disturb them, and dismissed the Mutters’ complaints about noise from their next-door-neighbour’s property as the sounds of “happy, joyful children.”

He likewise rejected a claim that the Mutters were verbally taunted, threatened and sworn at, saying that their neighbours’ were merely responding in kind.

“I’d also like to order them to go for counselling, but I don’t think I have the jurisdiction to order Mr. & Mrs. Mutter to go for psychological counselling,” the judge wrote in his ruling. “But I recommend it to them.”

The Mutters, meanwhile, have filed notice to appeal.

“My clients’ perspective is that the judge’s decision is not representative of what occurred,” Amanda Hart-Dowhan, the Edmonton lawyer who represents them, said.

Smith said she is relieved that the case is over — for now.

“We’re not home much in the summer,” she said. “We have been spending as much time at the lake as we can.”

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